Thursday, September 22, 2011

Been in get-shit-done mode all yesterday and today, sitting at my laptop until my eyes and head hurt.

Just ordered some new business cards, my old ones had fuckin MySpace links on them. Found a great and affordable site (uprinting.com) and made some pretty bad ass ones if I may say so myself, the ones on Vista Print were effing terrible. Need those in general, and especially now since I'm trying to fill the void in my calendar with the ETB India tour falling through. Didn't post any ads on Craiglsist (have actually had some good luck there) but browsed thru several pages and responded to one that looked promising, see if I can hook up some session work.

In the meantime ETB picked up this past Monday at Friends, our old residency slot. As much as I want to say I don't like playing 6th Street, our Mondays were getting bad ass before we left on tour, drawing weekend crowds and making weekend money on a Monday night with no cover and getting a cut of bar sales and passing a tip jar. And last Monday was no different. Lot of old friends and familiar faces, and plenty of foot traffic off the street. Good fun and good times, just like old times.

San Angelo and Lubbock were pretty decent over the weekend. Steel Penny Pub has reopened as the Penny Pub and has made some welcome upgrades. My only gripe is that they redid the walls of the men's room so they are no longer covered with centerfolds and weird amended graffiti like "THE REVOLUTION IS NEAR (my penis)". Added another date to my tag on the backstage wall, believe there are 5 of them now. Texas Cafe in Lubbock used to be called The Spoon and Eric used to play there all the time 2 years ago. Not a bad place tho we had to bring a PA, nice big room with a long, narrow stage which I prefer over a square stage. Don't have to crane my neck back to see Rob and watch for cues. Not a huge crowd but there were people that remembered the old band and will bring their friends next time.

All and all had BBQ for 3 meals in a row. Coopers in Llano on the way up to San Angelo, BBQ plate at venue in Lubbock, Coopers again on the way back. No wonder I've been eating fish, veggies and salads all week heh!

On Tuesday I went to Matt Smith's studio with Tim Abbott to sit in and hang out while work being done on Tim's record and to network with Matt. Need to get him a CD and maybe get into rotation with his session players. And that would be awesome.

Also still talking with Magnetic Eye Recordings. Have finally found cost effective numbers for a re-release of "Ocean of Stars". See how it goes. Would like to use record label stamp of credibility as catalyst to get Ocean of Stars up and running as a side project. Casually talking to players and thinking of both attainable and far-fetched goals for it. A booking agent and occasional support act touring would be awesome. Let y'all know how it goes.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Wow. What a difference a day can make. I will get to that, but in the meantime I will start like I was going to on Tuesday but never got around to completing.

Have had 2 weeks to unwind since getting back from the ETB summer tour. A week here at Tim and Tracey's, then spent most of last week in Corpus Christi seeing my family with Triniti. Went camping at the beach, caught a 22" redfish, saw the play 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee which my sister's BF is directing, and I wound up being in -- they have a few people from the crowd fill in as participants. I correctly spelled "Hedonophobia", heh. Tho while down there I felt weirdly distracted and occasionally irritable, it was a really good visit all around.

Got back to Austin and felt OK, so far so good dealing with being back in the civilian world. No hardcore PTSD like few years ago when I got back from 10 weeks on the road with The Mother Truckers and my brain literally could not wrap itself around how long I had been gone. Few days after that a really deep depression sank in that was hard to deal with. But that popped like a bubble when the Truckers went into to the studio to cut a track on break before heading back out again.

So Monday I restrung both of my guitars in prep to work on some Ocean of Stars gigs. That night went to see our friend Ric Furley and my bro Tank (didn't know he was playing as well, and even invited him to the gig, heh!) play with Ric Hornyak (unbeknownst to me, Tank's old Dealers bandmate). But then the fatigue kicked in. Hard. No energy, no motivation, was wondering if I was coming down with something. Felt like I was moving through molasses. Played guitar for several hours on Tuesday, which helped while I was playing, but soon as I stopped the balloon instantly deflated. Finally tried calling the doc to try to schedule an appointment, maybe the tour had taken a bigger toll on my health and should get some bloodwork done just in case... but 12 minutes on hold and I gave up.

Next day Triniti had her weekly Reiki trade with tattoo artist Karen Slafter. Only this time they both did Reiki on me. And holy shit, the effect was immediate and profound. Whatever they did totally situated my energy situation, and soon as they were done I sat up and Karen said "Your eyes look brighter!" Understatement of the year. It was like I was back to my old self, and I felt better than I had before I LEFT on that crazy summer-long tour. We ran out of there, grabbed lunch, and made quick work of the to-do list of errands. We got back and I continued to work, calling DR and talking string endorsement. Then mixed down the second half of "House of Leaves", my crazy 20-minute RPM Challenge epic. Then started editing pics for an EPK to send to DR.

This morning no different. We both woke up and immediately got to work on our computers for several hours. I was looking into online EPK sites, looks like they are all pay-to-use. Looked into CD printing and found some more cost-effective ways to pass on to Magnetic Eye Recs. May be calling them on the way to ETB gig in San Angelo tomorrow.

I'll be spending my birthday this year coming back from Lubbock TX. Last year was in Denmark with The Mother Truckers. Year before that I was in Birmingham AL teching for King's X. Awesome!